


No Heat, Just Darkness

by Prosodi



Category: Uncharted
Genre: Gen, Non-Graphic Violence, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-17
Updated: 2012-12-17
Packaged: 2017-11-21 09:11:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/595994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prosodi/pseuds/Prosodi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is a tiny private plane and it shakes terribly in the weather which has suddenly gone sour. The pilot is a friend of a friend and he doesn't speak much English. When something goes wrong, they all know it at the same time. In the still moment before the plane starts to lose altitude, Charlie – who has spent the entire flight quietly reciting a monologue from Julius Caesar – puts his hands on both sides of the fuselage and moans in fear. Chloe's teeth rattle in her skull. There are no parachutes and no room to move in the plane. They're going to die.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Heat, Just Darkness

**Author's Note:**

> Because give me a prompt like 'body heat blanket fic' and I take it to the worst possible place I can,

It is a tiny private plane and it shakes terribly in the weather which has suddenly gone sour. The pilot is a friend of a friend and he doesn't speak much English. When something goes wrong, they all know it at the same time. In the still moment before the plane starts to lose altitude, Charlie – who has spent the entire flight quietly reciting a monologue from Julius Caesar – puts his hands on both sides of the fuselage and moans in fear. Chloe's teeth rattle in her skull. There are no parachutes and no room to move in the plane. They're going to die.

She puts her head down, braces herself against the pilot's seat in front of her and screams at her boots. The sound of the world is so loud that she can't hear anything but the howl of air and metal and the horrible tilt of gravity as it all shreds to pieces in an explosion of aluminum, no heat and all darkness.

Then: her hands. She is suddenly aware of her own hands. There is blood on the knuckles. She can't feel them. She unpeels her fingernails from her palms and turns them over. She blinks at them. She touches her face and it hurts. Her mouth is dry and her head aches and there's a tight press across her hips whch is her seatbelt. She slowly unbuckles it and then falls four feet into a snow bank from the tree where her seat is lodged.

Clambering to her feet, she wades and slides through the snow. Her limbs feel all loose. Her boots don't have any traction. Her fingers aren't working right and she knows intuitively that she should hurt all over, but doesn't. So she follows the trail of debris, broken branches and the smell of smoke to the smoldering wreck of the plane where it lies at the edge of a field. What's left of the plane is nothing but an anonymous tangle of metal, deep gouges in the snow and the spark of fire in nearby treetops. There's a scattered ring of plastic and clothes and burning paper: scraps of pre-flight check paperwork and the scorched wreck of a book. The title's in English and she can't figure out how to make sense of the words; the pages are all dog-eared and she recognizes but can't read Charlie's handwriting in the margins.

She croaks out a noise. Can't get her face to work and can't get her mouth to make the right shapes. It takes a moment before she can bring herself to try again – before she can call out. Before she can scream into the low light as dusk falls. She calls for Charlie first, then for the pilot (and is surprised she even remembers his name). Then for Charlie again. Then just Charlie. Then just noise.

It'll be dark soon. She should move – find cover. She's already numb from the cold and isn't dressed for this weather. She doesn't know where to go, but knows she can't stay here. And that she has no reason to. So she turns and walks east toward the far away line of trees on the far side of the field. There's a faint trail of debris and not far from the crash site she finds a mangled pullover half buried in the snow. It's riddled with holes, but she tugs it on anyway and leaves it with the neck high around her face. She lets it sit there like a child dressed in a parent's clothing while she scans the field for anything else that might be useful, which is when she spots the other seat lying on its side some distance away. She walks toward it. Doesn't want to know. Or maybe does. She calls out. Lengthens her stride. There is a shape in the seat and she's running, the sleeves of the pullover flapping.

There's a body still strapped to the seat. She knows it's not Charlie before she's within ten paces, but goes close to check anyway. The pilot is dead, his body cold and frosted over. His throat is mangled, but there's very little blood here. He must have died before he hit the ground. She undoes the seat belt and struggles against rigor mortis to roll the body out of the seat. She strips it of the pilot's cargo jacket, then pulls the boots off it one at a time and peels the socks off the grey-blue feet riddled with vericose veins. Her fingers shake as she pulls the socks onto her hands: makeshift mittens. She doesn't know how long it takes, but by the time she's finished she feels breathless. Her cheeks sting and her nose is so dry that if she sneezed, she's convinced it would go bloody. She rubs her face with her socked hands and can't even care about the foot smell or the small sound of her name from somewhere far away.

It comes again though. And then a third time. She drops her hands and turns around in a slow, ragged circle. “Charlie?”

He's trudging toward her through the snow, only a few yards away. Why she didn't see him before-- she lurches in his direction, dragging her feet through the powdery snow. He isn't much faster. He has blood all over his face from a laceration high on his forehead.

“You look like shit,” she says once they're standing toe to toe. He catches her arm, his fingers angry red from the cold.

“You scared the piss out of me.”

She laughs. The sound punches out of her. For a second she has to press her hands to her face to keep back a sob. Her teeth chatter and she can't control her fucking hands. “Here.” She wrestles the book out from inside her shirt. “I have your book.”

She can read the title now: _Breakfast of Champions._ Charlie takes it and rolls it up in his hands, breathing out a manic sound. He swats her gently with the paperback. She slaps his arm down.

“Come on,” she says. “I don't know about you, but I'm a little cold.”


End file.
